Burger Wuss

by M. T. Anderson

  “Strike one!” the ump called.

  “Would you concentrate?” Mike roared. “For once?”

  Fletcher caught the ball and wound up. He threw it again. I swung.

  “Strike two!”

  Turner started yelling from second base. “Come on, you little pansy! You little shit! Would you do something right for once? Hit the goddamn ball! Just hit the goddamn ball!”

  “Language!” said Mike.

  “Umpire,” said Fletcher. “I can’t possibly concentrate with all this bickering.”

  “Right,” said the ump. “Runners should shut their gobs.”

  Turner watched me with hatred.

  Fletcher wound up again. He threw it. I swung.

  And connected. It seemed so easy, now that I had done it. The connection was firm. The ball went flying. I ran as hard as I could. I didn’t even look toward Diana. As I splashed down the base line, I thought to myself, I’m just concentrating on running, not looking at all for Diana or getting distracted by other things.

  I rounded first and headed for second. I didn’t even allow myself to look up.

  I had therefore almost gotten to third before the third baseman told me Fletcher had caught the ball on the fly and I had been out for some time.

  That was three outs. Then BQ was up. It just kept going on. I don’t remember the details. I plunged after a ball or two. Fletcher hit a homer. When Turner pitched, Kid didn’t budge his bat. Kid made a big show of yawning. He struck out on purpose. I wasn’t very aware of what was going on. Finally they were saying it was over. They were saying the score was 20-2. People were swearing. That was it.

  I walked back toward the slope. I was soaked. I was shivering. Kid and Fletcher were talking to Turner.

  “Great final inning,” Fletcher said to Turner.

  “Don’t mess with us,” Kid said.

  Fletcher added, “This’ll teach you O’Dermott’s girls not to steal.”

  Kid said, “Any time you want to apologize and give it back —”

  “You can kiss our butts,” Fletcher finished.

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  Kid and Fletcher looked at each other. “Sure, Turner,” Kid said. “Keep playing dumb. You seem like a natural.”

  They walked away. Turner saw me. I changed direction. It wasn’t fast enough. He caught me.

  The first few times underwater weren’t so bad. I’d managed to catch my breath soon after he grabbed my hair. I was very calm and blew out through my nose. There was a stick in the water, and I was afraid it would put my eye out. I could feel how soft my eye was. Each time my head slammed into the water, the stick reared up toward my eye. I tried to splutter that he couldn’t push me so deep, that it was really dangerous. The next time I went down, I got water in my mouth. I started gagging. It tasted earthy. It stung inside my nose.

  He kicked me in the spine. I curled up in the water. The stick was digging into my cheek. I wrapped my hands around my knees. My whole body ached. Turner was walking away. Just behind him, I saw Diana, watching us without moving, like it was someone’s funeral. The next time I looked, she was gone.

  I stood up. My body was soaked. I climbed the hill.

  Rick was getting ready to leave. I had to catch a ride with him. He had put down towels on his car seats. I was about to get in when I saw Shunt quietly unlocking his bike.

  “Shunt!” I called. He looked up. “Where are you going?”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “The bushes.”

  “You can’t go to the bushes in this rain,” I said. “The bushes will be flooded.”

  “I have a piece of plastic.”

  “Don’t go to the bushes, man. It’s like fifty degrees and pouring.”

  “The bushes are fine.”

  “I bet my parents would let you stay on the sofa. It’s a sofa bed. It folds out.”

  “Is something wrong with the bushes?”

  “It’s pouring! Won’t you just find a friend and stay at their house? You can’t stay out in this!”

  Shunt shook his head. He got on his bike. “Yeah, thanks, but screw you, Mom,” he said, and started to ride off. “See you later.”

  Rick looked after him like he was diseased. I got in the car and closed the door.

  Rick drove me home. He didn’t say anything about the fact that I had lost him his run. He didn’t say anything at all. He let me out of the car almost without talking. I stood there as he drove away. I had a coughing fit.

  I went inside to take a shower. I was glad I had a Plan.

  The next day, Mike gave me photocopied signs that explained to our patrons we would be closed the next four days on account of a commercial. He told me that we needed to keep the place spick-and-span, more than usual. He told me to look smart, by which he meant snappy. He explained he needed the signs taped to all the doors. He was worried about Management coming.

  He gave me a roll of tape. It was a weighted dispenser. I went from door to door. I spooled out lengths of tape and ran my finger along them to fasten them to the corners of the paper. I hung them inside so they looked out.

  At one point I got the tape caught on myself. Then I got it caught on an announcement. Then I got the announcement caught on myself. I was clutching the other announcements under my arm. My arm was folded like a chicken wing. I reached my head down to bite the tape. It didn’t tear.

  I knelt down and dropped the flyers. They fanned out across the floor. I put down the tape. I pulled it off my shirt. I tried to peel it off the announcement. The announcement tore. The letters were the first things to go. I crumpled up the announcement and threw it in the trash. Then I started to gather up the other announcements from the floor.

  I heard Turner yelling, “Dudes! About time. Where you been?”

  I had all the flyers in my hands. I tapped them on the tiles to make their edges straight.

  “Can’t hear you, man,” said one of the guys. “You’ll have to speak up.”

  “Excuse me? Excuse me?” said another. They were the two guys we’d gone to the graveyard with.

  “What the hell you been doing?” Turner said. “And what the hell’s that?”

  “Can’t hear you, man. Please talk into the microphone.”

  “Periscope up,” said the other.

  They were right on the other side of some plastic plants and trash barrels. I heard a rustling and looked up fearfully. A long metal stalk poked up over the plants. It had a box for a head.

  “What is that thing?” asked Turner. “Where you been?”

  “We’re not going to take that BQ bull.”

  “No way,” said the other one. “Picking that field? No way are we gonna take that. Them like paying off the ump? No way.”

  “So we just had a little payback.”

  “What?” said Turner. I could hear the excitement in his voice. “What’d you guys do?”

  “So we swung by the Burger Queen —”

  “Home of the Jumbo.”

  “No,” said Turner. “That’s my pants.”

  “Swung by BQ, pulled up in back.”

  “The drive-thru lane.”

  “Drove right up to the microphone.”

  “Right up.”

  “Stole it.”

  There was a silence.

  “The microphone. Which is what we —”

  “Taa-daa!”

  “— have right here.”

  “That’s theirs?” Turner hissed. “Man, you have to hide that thing! Mike sees that, we’re dead! Why’d you bring it in?”

  “You’ll have to speak into the microphone.”

  “Hi, Turner. Can we take your order?”

  “Please proceed to the first window.”

  “Shut the hell up,” said Turner. “Get that out of here!”

  “Periscope up!” said one of them.

  The plastic ferns wagged. Suddenly the square head of the microphone thrust through again. It stared down at me. I flattened myself against the trash barr
el. The head jiggled. It was dented.

  “Stop screwing around!” said Turner.

  The head pulled back.

  “Are you pissed off or something?” said one of them.

  “’Course I’m pissed off!” said Turner. “You’re a couple of idiots! Why didn’t you take me with you? I’d’ve gone, man.”

  “It was kind of a spur of the minute thing.”

  “We were just like, hey, we could throw a rock at their camera and then grab their microphone.”

  “You broke the camera?”

  “That’ll teach ’em to laugh at my goddamn game.”

  “We had to break the camera, man. Otherwise they would’ve seen us hitting the microphone with the softball bats.”

  “BANG! BANG! And it was like, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.”

  “Stop waving that thing around. Jeez, you girls are stupid. Mike sees this, he’ll be completely ripped and he’ll call the cops.”

  “So what do you think of it?”

  “It’s risky, man,” said Turner, “but necessary. I mean, you got to do what you got to do.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Thank you for such a great game, Mrs. BQ. BANG! BANG! BANG!”

  “It wasn’t all them,” said Turner. “I was on sucky form.”

  “Yeah. We shouldn’t have gotten stoked before the game.”

  “We didn’t play too good either.”

  “You sucked,” said Turner. “And that little shit whatsisname — Little Miss Anthony —” (my fingers tightened on my knees) “— he sucked bigtime. After the game I kicked him so hard he was puking. I like held his head underwater. He was gasping for breath and stuff. I said, ‘That’ll show you to mess up my game.’ Then I put his head under again for a really long time. And gentlemen, it felt beautiful.”

  “Please, Turner. Just once. Speak into the mike.”

  When I got home, my parents were sitting holding hands in the den. The den was dark. The day wasn’t bad outside, but the shades were drawn.

  “Hey,” I said, and started up the stairs.

  “Anthony,” said my father.

  “Darling,” said my mother. “We need to talk.” She had a legal notepad next to her on the sofa.

  My hand was on the banister. “What’s up?”

  “Why don’t you take a seat in that chair?” my father said sorrowfully. “It’s very comfortable.”

  I walked over to the recliner. I was suspicious. I sat down slowly. “Should I extend the footrest?”

  My father shook his head. My mother said, “Anthony.”

  I wriggled. I wanted to center myself on the cushion. It seemed like it might be the kind of conversation where you wanted to be in the center of the cushion.

  “Anthony,” said my mother. She took a deep breath, and let it all out. Her cheeks inflated when she sighed. “We heard about Diana.”

  I felt a quick sense of panic. “Heard what about her?”

  “That she . . . Anthony, you know.”

  “How she . . . ,” said my father. He waved his hand in the air.

  My mother consulted her pad. “Someone named Turner? At a party?”

  “She . . . ,” said my father. He waved his hand more.

  My mother said, “There was chemistry between them?”

  I stood up. “Who told you?”

  “That doesn’t matter, Anthony,” said my mother, putting out her arms. “Oh, my little baby. I hate to see you hurt inside.”

  “It does matter.”

  “Anthony,” said my father, rising to his feet. “There’s nothing as bad as losing a woman you love.”

  My mother said, “I think it’s about time for a family hug.”

  “Who told you about this?” I demanded. My mother and father were intertwining, holding out their arms to me. My mother tried to take me by the upper arm.

  “Don’t touch me! Stop!” I shook them off.

  “Anthony,” said my mother, “you can’t let it bother you just because Diana fooled around with some jerk.”

  “This is none of —”

  “Mrs. Gravitz told us, honey. I guess she overheard some things.”

  My father said, “By God, Anthony, I know how it is to lose a good woman.” For a minute, he just sucked on his teeth. He shook his head. “Anthony, if she left you, she just wasn’t worthy of you.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “That’s just not true.”

  “We thought she was pretty special, too,” said my mother, nodding. “But sometimes you can be wrong about a person.”

  “You’ll get over this sooner than you expect,” said my father. “This is what the teenage years are all about. It may seem like a disaster right now. But Anthony, remember: There are always other fish in the sea.”

  “Thanks, Pop. That sounds like a great dating option.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ll just fill the car with brine and cruise.”

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic with your father.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “Stop fighting us,” said my mother, smoothing the hairs on my arm with her hand. “Let the grieving process start.”

  “It sounds like Diana was a little fast for you,” said my father. “It’s too bad, because I liked that girl. I liked that girl a whole heap of a lot.”

  I pulled my arm away. “This is none of your business!”

  “Come on, Anthony,” said my mother. “Let’s make a cup of cocoa and some cookies together. It will be just like old times.”

  “It’s the — it’s — it’s the middle of the summer!” I spluttered. “I will not have any cocoa! This is none of your —!”

  I ran out the door.

  I hated him. Turner. I hated him for all the shame. I hated him for what people thought. What people knew. I hated him because he’d taken her away. I walked through the ’burbs. It looked like rain. I walked all the way to the car park where we’d had our picnic.

  I started the walk up and down. I walked in circles. I walked through the levels. I saw the rain start in the air shaft. I saw it speckle the pavement on the top level. It made the tarmac smell hot and dusty.

  I walked until late in the night. The rain was quiet, as if healing. I went to a phone. I dialed a number. It was Burger Queen.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is a friend.” Through the phone, I heard the rattle of trays. In a voice low and strange, I said, “I have some information about your troll.”

  I hid behind a tree. I was not close to the fire.

  There were three stumps around me. All of them were big with moss. My knee pressed into one of them. The moss was cool and wet. I worried about what might be slithering there. Bugs love to live in moss.

  The tree was a beech. My fingers curled around it. They kept me steady. I was squatting. No one could see me.

  Shunt and I had finished our secret errand. Everything was in place. Tonight was the night. The Plan would bear fruit. Stage three. Everything was perfect. When we had finished preparing, Shunt had gone and joined the party. I had to wait. We wanted to throw people off the scent by arriving separately.

  Music came from the top of Party Hill. People were shouting at each other and laughing. I didn’t recognize the music. It had a lush guitar sound. It wasn’t bad. Somewhere up there, there was a keg, maybe two. I could see the flames of the bonfire. Quick, dark shapes threw themselves around the fire, between the tangle of boughs.

  Below, I could see the pond reflecting the black outline of the forest. Above, I could see the hills that started a few miles north, rising to the mountains in the next state. There was a dim, sick haze where the strip malls lay.

  It had been about fifteen minutes. Time for me to go up.

  I walked casually up the path.

  The party was in full swing. People were sitting on logs. People were sloshing beer around in cups. Turner manned the keg. A few guys and a girl stood next to the CD player, pointing to different CDs, b
ickering. They couldn’t agree on what to play. I recognized almost everyone from O’Dermott’s. Jenn and Rick were by the fire, both with beers. They waved. I saw Stacey, Turner’s girlfriend, standing to one side of them, looking out of place.

  I went over to them. A plan about Stacey was forming itself in my head. I thought it was important to impress her.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, to Rick and Jenn.

  “Hi, Anthony.”

  “Hey.”

  There was a silence. We looked at each other expectantly. We had run out of things to say.

  “So,” Rick tried. “I brought my brother along tonight.”

  “Good. Great.”

  “I thought it might be fun for him.”

  We looked around for Rick’s brother. We finally saw him near two kissing couples. Their backs were brushing him. He was standing with both hands over his face, trembling.

  “Oh,” said Rick, without much enthusiasm. “There he is over there.”

  There was another awkward silence. I worried that Stacey was listening. We stood and looked at the fire. It had been made of lots of broken boughs, the remains of a go-cart, and charcoal.

  “That’s a big fire,” I said, not knowing what else to say. Jenn and Rick were in their own little love-continent.

  “They started it with gasoline,” said Jenn.

  “There was a big old explosion.”

  “I thought they were going to take out some owls.”

  “It looked like something from hell.”

  Jenn raised her finger. “Smokey the Bear says,” and they both recited in furry voices, “‘Only you can prevent forest fires.’”

  From there they moved on to, “Give a hoot! Don’t pollute!” and for a little bit we made up our own. “Don’t leave a log! Just curb your dog!” “Please, boys and girls. Don’t bite our squirrels.” “Psychos and townies! Don’t bury Brownies!” and so on.

  I happened to glance at Stacey. She was smiling.

  “Sorry for listening in,” she said.

  “Uh, no,” I said, smiling widely, trying to think up something to say. “No, that’s, well, fine.”

  We all stared at the fire. The burning go-cart had been steered by means of a cable.

  “Where’s Turner?” I asked Stacey, knowing the answer. “Oh, over there near the keg. Didn’t he introduce you to anyone?”